


Perfection Put Back Together

by empty_movement



Category: Shoujo Kakumei Utena | Revolutionary Girl Utena
Genre: Cheap Metaphors, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:40:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21834568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/empty_movement/pseuds/empty_movement
Summary: Akio conspires with a dying Ruka to lure Juri into the duel arena one last time. Written by Giovanna.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	Perfection Put Back Together

Death was here, clinging to the tables, the bed, the floor, oppressive and inescapable. It was a fog brought indoors, creating a haze about the room that Akio didn't necessarily dislike, but knew to be deceptive. The dying always think more clearly than everyone else.  
“Chairman.”  
Much more clearly. Exhaustion weighed down Ruka's eyelids, so that his lashes partly obscured his view. Jaundice left his skin otherworldly, yellow, and dehydration loosened it against a bony frame. He touched his face self-consciously, but if the sight of him alarmed Akio at all, he hid it well.  
“You’re an old man, Ruka.”  
“Just when I'd started getting good at being a teenager.”  
“Unfortunately, those two conditions are not mutually exclusive.” His voice was startlingly loud for the room it filled. Or so it felt at first; it was only unhushed, and Ruka had forgotten what people sounded like when they weren't dancing around his condition. The bed creaked as Akio leaned against it, unaccustomed to the weight of flesh. Ruka watched him shift from one foot to the other, making himself comfortable. A chair was nearby, obscured by a mess of blankets, but Ruka knew it wouldn’t have mattered. Akio was exactly where he preferred to be. “Your nurse doesn’t think you're long for this world.”  
“She saw me fold over my own legs this afternoon. It didn't inspire confidence.”  
“Perhaps not in her. But if you ask me, I would say you don’t appear interested in death just yet.”  
“Who would be?”  
“Everyone, in the end. Of course, it’s the ‘in the end,’ part that people struggle with.” His gaze traced the thin tubing that began at an unfriendly looking machine and ended in Ruka's arm.  
“Mm. It's strange to think at some point I'll be finished dying. The wait feels like an eternity, now that eternity isn't worth anything. Or...is there something Ends of the World can do about it that the Chairman cannot?” Ruka smiled, and Akio tipped his head, as if ceding a victory.  
“That’s a question you should have asked me a long time ago.”  
“I was afraid to. You might have said yes,” he murmured, attempting a wry tone. The hoarseness of his voice, gone dry with lack of use, didn’t quite manage it.  
“And now, I might say no. The journey to acceptance is farther along than you think, though you're not so far gone that you would refuse a detour. I suspect you understand by now that taking the longer way will bring you to the same destination, whether I interfere or not. But… that's not why you're asking, is it?”  
The head of the bed groaned, pulling Ruka upright. The movement brought on a wave of raspy, dry coughing. As he fought to catch his breath he heard a brief exchange between Akio and a nurse, and a tray being set down and swung around the bedside in front of him. What he glanced at warily, he reached for with a delight that surprised him.  
“Real tea. Pu-erh? How did you get them to steep it right?”  
“Explicit instruction.”  
That was a smile Ruka didn't expect to see, all teeth and promises, and thrown by it, he turned his attention to what Akio had brought instead. His fingers were thin, but so was the teacup, a frail and delicate thing ready to droop with the weight of its contents. They drank in silence, while Ruka’s senses sluggishly tried to do the exquisite tea justice. He had mostly made his way through his cup before he bothered to notice the not-pattern of shimmering gold that decorated it. And Akio’s. And the teapot. He turned it in his hands, examining more closely. Veins glittered along the fault lines of what had clearly been shattered before.  
“Kintsugi. Taking a broken thing and making it whole; a teacup mended with gold, to celebrate the flaws it has overcome, rather than pointlessly trying to conceal the obvious. People are no different, I find. A broken creature pulled back together may try to hide their flaws…”  
“...but they should gild them instead.”  
Akio’s laugh started somewhere in his diaphragm and ended in the pit of Ruka's stomach. It had not always been welcome there, but here and now, it made him more human than he'd been in weeks. His visitor seemed oblivious to his condition, speaking with the same purry, careless sensuality he'd had back at the school. That was centuries ago; back then, Ruka had been whole, bright-eyed, and confident, a beautiful youth brimming with potential. That was over. Ruka was sure whatever Akio had come for, it wouldn't be any good. Still, it felt wonderful to be on edge again. His thoughts stretched, waking from a drug-addled sleep. He'd forgotten what it felt like to think in anything but past tense, and warily, he let his mind wander to long-abandoned places: the present, and even worse… the future.  
Akio, appearing satisfied with something, drew from his pocket a gold chain taut with the heavy weight of the locket it bore. Ruka's hand stretched out automatically, and the corners of his mouth turned down. It felt damp around the edges, waterlogged, but he didn't bother opening it.  
Ruka's back straightened, scraps of stored up strength coalescing into defensiveness. It was definitely going to be necessary now, even if his clipped speech was not. “There really was no hope for her escaping Ends of the World. How were you going to resist a talent like that?”  
“Do you think I tried to?”  
Wrinkles around Ruka's eyes deepened as he squinted; the room was uncomfortably bright now that he was looking at it. Their appearance intrigued Akio. Seemingly unaware of the impropriety of his touch, he traced the thin line of a blue eyebrow down to where the wrinkles gathered, soft fingertips smoothing them out briefly before letting them form again. The contact was curious at first, only melting into sensuality as his fingers fell away, nails skirting down the side of Ruka’s face. Ruka shook his head, the beginning of a smirk on his cracked lips. Any other reaction, he thought, would be a waste of effort.  
“She's a brilliant duelist. One of the most powerful I've ever seen." He nodded toward Ruka's hand. "But her full potential lies trapped there, close to her, and utterly out of her reach. She knows, as we know, that she cannot grasp it without breaking the locket. And she will break with it. I'd have the shards break into shapes I can use.”  
The effort of sussing out Akio's motives lifted a heavy fog Ruka hadn't noticed was there until it wasn't. Every little beep and blip of the machines around him pressed into his attention, and the air felt crisp, electric. Perhaps it was the tea. He poured himself another glass, surprised by the weight of the teapot, and more so by his carelessly, successfully, lifting it. The astringent smokiness of it captured his senses for a brief, wonderful moment before he returned to reality. Akio had been watching him, evidently pleased with something. If it was because his eyes had cleared, whitened, and regained some of the spark of life, Ruka didn't know it.  
“You would take this away from her? But she won't duel without it. It's what drives her.”  
“Indeed it is. Arisugawa is set to duel once more, after which it would be best for all involved if miracles became less of a priority in her life.”  
“So she will lose. She's just… a whetstone for the Sword of Dios.”  
Ruka couldn't remember when Akio had moved from resting against the bed to sitting on it, but now he leaned back, his arm draped on the bedside table. “Does that anger you to know?”  
“Not at all. Miracles are not what Juri needs.”  
Akio laughed. “She doesn’t know that. Or...she doesn’t believe she knows it. You are at the mercy of the ticking clock, far outside the reach of Dios’ power. And for it, you have something she lacks. The perspective of hindsight.”  
“Call it what it is,” Ruka murmured, flexing his fingers around the locket. “It's the perspective of the dying.”  
“Yes...that’s another way to put it.” A curious expression passed over Akio's face, as if he'd momentarily forgotten Ruka was yellow, emaciated, and bedridden in front of him. To tell the truth, Ruka had briefly forgotten this himself. Akio pressed on, “Your insight is precious. A beautiful consequence of bitter mortality. It’s something that can’t be grown in a perfect garden. So I must, at times, have it brought in.”  
That smile again. The one that promised so much more than the obvious, as much as the obvious appealed. How could Akio smile at him like that? Like nothing had changed, like he was still a beautiful young man with a bright, tempting smile of his own. Didn't he see how Ruka looked? This was somehow worse than the reserved care others took with him. It made him miss, and regret, and want, and served no purpose...  
“The correct answer to whatever I offer, of course, is no...”  
“I'm well aware of that, Akio. Wisdom is no protection from you.”  
“Yet, here I am, at your end, knowing you won't refuse me.”  
Akio’s voice had turned all velvet and smoke, and it brought back memories Ruka thought he had no use for anymore. Good and bad, pleasure and pain, hope and failure. The Dueling Game came rushing back to him, bringing it with it a thirst no tea could ever quench. Akio knew it, too: he recognized that flirtatious satisfaction. It was in the way he leaned back, encroaching on Ruka’s space. Recollection flooded the hollowed out spaces in his mind. He knew this look. His agreement was a foregone conclusion.  
Ruka broke the gaze Akio had captured to stare down at the locket. There was no point asking why it was in his hands now, he thought, trying to temper a gnawing eagerness with cynicism. The fingers framing its shimmering gold were twig-like, all visible veins and paper-thin fingernails. They curled around the imagined hilt of a sword, aching with a sudden, overwhelming eagerness to test its weight.  
“Sharpen the blade she wields. Bring her to the arena. And let it break her.”  
“What do I get out of this?” Ruka cringed at his own voice. It was louder than it had been, and it was hungry, and hopeful, and he knew that was not going to help him.  
“Saving her from herself is not enough?” Akio lifted his hand before Ruka could answer, falling just short of silencing him with a touch to his lips. “You will be given a gift only someone who has received it themselves can give. Something only we would understand. An escape, whatever the cost, from the overwhelming dread of dying.”  
Ruka’s expression soured, his gut grasping what reasoning hadn’t caught up to yet. “....and death?”  
“Death has already claimed you, and that I can’t change. But come to the school, accept its illusions, and you will, until that moment, live as you lived before. Whole, and human, and not bound to a bed melting before your very eyes.”  
A slow inhale. A dry mouth. Fingers twitched again, swearing this time they could feel the soft grip of worn leather. Of his sword. Ruka’s chest hitched, and pain blossomed with the motion, bouncing around against his aching ribs. For a split second, he feared the worst, but he was mistaken. It was, much to his surprise, laughter.  
“But it won't be real. I'll still be dying.”  
"No. It won't be real. Will it matter, if you believe it?"  
"How can I believe I'm not dying? I can't even walk. I can't.." Ruka gestured to the tubing hanging from his arm.  
“Had I asked you when I walked in what color the walls were, you wouldn’t have been able to tell me. And had you not been busy trying to guess my angle, you would have choked on the tea.” Akio’s fingers returned again to the yellowing skin at the corner of an eyelid, this time spreading into Ruka’s hair, nails lightly scratching his scalp. “Dying is an active process. So is forgetting. You can pick between them, and it is in my power to make either convincing.”  
“Yes.” The word escaped Ruka’s lips in an explosive breath, before he let himself think better of it. When he uttered the word again, it was heavy with doubt, and Akio grinned at the sound of it.  
"Guilt is for the living, Ruka. You know that better than anyone." A thumb stroked Ruka's temple, and he shivered. He found, somewhere, the energy to shiver, as well as the energy to respond to the inviting purr of Akio's voice. "I admit, I find you quite captivating the way you are. But there's no shame in wanting to escape the heavy burden of mortality."  
Though neither budged, Ruka felt the space between them close. It had always felt that way, like Akio controlled the air's willingness to divide them. Ruka parted his lips, licking them, unsurprised by now to find them smooth and supple, though they'd felt like sandpaper an hour ago. Fingers tightened behind his head, and he found himself grinning, a lazily inviting expression testing itself on his face. This he remembered: that the prize was always in resisting the temptation. There was no fun in it if you didn’t let yourself be lured in, a little.  
Akio laughed, indulgent and almost chiding. His fingers drew back, running through smooth, short locks of dark blue. "What happened to your hair?"  
Ruka blinked as he withdrew, a familiar combination of tension and relief in it, before shrugging a little awkwardly, watching Akio's fingers. "I was...doing especially poorly last month, and the hair had matted. The nurses were forced to cut off what they couldn't untangle." He smoothed over the back of his head self-consciously, half-aware that he couldn't see the veins in his hands as they approached. "Will it grow back when I forget that?"  
Akio pursed his lips, considering this, and Ruka imagined he could see either state as readily as the other. He laughed, exasperated as the answer became obvious.  
"No, I don't think so. It suits you."


End file.
